


Big Houses

by QuietLittleVoices



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was like a house, being built constantly until his roof caved in and his walls came tumbling down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Big Houses

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for this.

He’s not unlike a house, the sorcerer older than most history books who still lives in the body of a young man (because that’s when his house started crumbling).

The foundation was years of farm work and boyhood games and accidentally lighting the drapes on fire when he had a nightmare. The poured concrete of his mothers’ love kept him upright through the persecution of ‘children like him’ (and the repetition of those words made it warped, full of air bubbles that threatened the integrity of the structure).

With Camelot came walls.

The southernmost wall was built to protect himself, his secret. It was build from thick, unforgiving steel. Cold and senseless, a mask he used to keep himself save. To keep everyone safe.

The eastern wall came with a large window, out of which he could see the rising sun – the promise of new beginnings. The affirmation that all the pain he suffered would one day be gone. That days could be hard but the sun would rise again.

The western wall was built of magic, both light and dark. Though the top coat of the wall is black, if you were to peel it away, there’s white underneath. It just takes someone willing to see past what they’re taught (he thought Arthur might take the time to strip the paint away).

And then there was the northern wall, the final one built in his house. It was his favourite, built of solid, cold, grey stone, like the walls of the castle he knew as home. It was held together by love and friendship, trust and hope, laughter and joy. Happy memories that shone like gold and crimson.

And the roof, well… the roof was only partially built. It was a patchwork of the thatch of his boyhood home and the stone of his new life, but together they came crashing down and let in the rain and snow. They pulled each other down and down until they hit his floors and shook his foundations loose and in the rubble, he lost his north wall. And with its destruction, his happiness escaped. It fled from its place, stuck between stone, and floated off into the sky.

When that was gone, there was really no use anymore. His whole house came crumbling down around him, rocking the foundations out until there was only rubble, concrete and straw and paint and wood. It was all just dust, an assemblage of memories from a life he used to live, belonging to a man he no longer knew – a man he’d forgotten how to be.

So he burnt the ashes – lit his house on fire in the dead of night and ran as far away as he could. Or, at least, he tried. Every time he passed the crest of the hill, he’d see it – his forever burning flame. Waiting. For thousands of years, it burnt on and on, the light illuminating the valley of his heart. The sun no longer rose, because there was no longer an eastern window to see it through. The beauty of it could not be appreciated by the likes of the aging sorcerer.

The only thing left for him to do was walk in a straight line that was really a circle, always leading back to the same point. The rubble of his life. The ashes that held his memories, his essence, the very core of who and what he was. But they weren’t worth his time any longer; he’d spent years sifting through the wreckage and knew that there was nothing left for him there.

Until one day he crested the hill once more and there was life. A young man, with golden hair a noble face that he could never forget (not even if he tried, and _God_ , how he’d tried), sat in the rubble with a light smile on his face. Light radiated out from him, gold and crimson like the dreams of half-forgotten memories. And the sorcerer joined him were he sat, because he had no other choice – everything had led to this point, after all.

Together, piece by piece, brick by brick, they rebuilt the house. Stronger and more whole than before.


End file.
